Asking Irfan Pathan to open not wise
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India’s match against England was a perfect example of a well-balanced side dominating their opponents in every department of the game.
This win should also convince the Indian team management about playing with five bowlers in the rest of the tournament and Dhoni has to realize that he himself coming in at number six and Pathan at seven is a decent enough batting line-up with proper depth to win a major competition.
Dhoni is just not a keeper who can bat but only as a batsman can he be a cause for worry for other teams.
There is no need to waste Pathan as an opener, rather it would be wise to have him at seven and make the most of it.
India fielded a perfect balance in the bowling department in their match against England. With Harbhajan, Piyush Chawla as front-line bowlers and Yuvraj backing up, the Indian spin department had every bit of it to push the opponent in to the corner.
With Harbhajan you had off-spin, with Piyush you had the leg-spin going and with Yuvraj to back-up you had the left-arm spin to fall back on, if things didn’t go right with the other two.
Dhoni’s biggest asset is that all his frontline batters, Gambhir, Kohli, Rohit are amongst runs. The likes of Dhoni, Yuvraj, Raina, Pathan are still not being used to the fullest in my opinion.
So India shouldn’t be worrying about batting and adding more to it. Rather they should plan about their bowling and must keep in mind, that for winning a world cup their bowling must be in striking form. Same goes with Pakistan.
In the super eights Pakistan will be playing in Colombo, where the pitches will become more spinner friendly as the tournament goes on and that should mean that they can do away with one fast bowler and add another spinner.
Umar Gul is a seasoned customer and with him it could be either Yaseer Arafat or Sohail Tanvir. From the two fast bowlers Pakistan will need to get eight overs and the remaining twelve can be handled by Hafeez, Ajmal, Afridi and Raza Hasan. That will surely give Pakistan the required variation to keep opponents guessing.
In the super eights Pakistan will need to concentrate more on their batting. Their top-order is looking good but people in the lower order will need to plan more.
In the match against New Zealand I was finding everyone coming in and trying to hit fours and sixes. No need for that. If you take four-five singles and look for a boundary then every over you will be scoring eight to nine runs.
In doing this two things will happen, the bowlers will find it tough to adjust line due to constant rotation by the batters.
Also you will be able to maintain a run-rate of at least seven to eight per over, which should be good scoring rate.
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